Update: the race averaged 8.9 million viewers, down 7% versus 2014.
American Pharoah won the second leg of horse racing’s triple crown at The Preakness which drew a 5.8 overnight rating on Saturday. That’s down 7.9% from last year’s 6.3 overnight.
While that’s not great news for NBC, American Pharoah’s win certainly was. The difference in the numbers for the Belmont Stakes is vast between having a triple crown contender and not having one. Last year’s Belmont with California Chrome vying for the crown averaged nearly 21 million viewers. The 2013 Belmont, with no contender, averaged 7 million viewers.
Per NBC Sports the Preakness peaked with 7.6/17 household rating/share from 6:15-6:30pm.
Top local markets:
Baltimore 16.8/35
Louisville 11.9/22
Ft. Myers 10.9/21
Tampa 9.6/20
Indy 9.2/19
Richmond 9.1/18
Orlando 8.5/18
Nashville 8.4/15
Tulsa 8.4/16
Buffalo 8.1/17
Overnight household rating = the live+same day DVR overnight metered-market household rating from the top 56 Nielsen television markets. The 56 markets (out of 210 total) account for about 70% of the US TV-viewing population. The overnight household rating is the percentage of the households that were tuned-in in those markets. The share is the percentage of the households that were watching TV at the time.
Example: a 21 household rating with a 40% share means that on average 21% of all the households (in those 56 markets) were tuned-in and that 40% of the households watching TV were tuned-in.